Shopify & DRINKS Streamline Tax & Compliance For Wine Sellers
Shopify Plus is making it easier for online wine sellers to navigate the complexities of tax and regulatory compliance with a new partnership with DRINKS.
DRINKS, the leader in ecommerce alcohol, today announced a partnership with Shopify, a provider of essential internet infrastructure for commerce, to introduce a regulatory solution that allows wineries and retailers in the United States – for the first time – to have real-time tax and compliance fully embedded within a native Shopify checkout experience.
Available to Shopify Plus merchants at launch, DRINKS’ app provides a wine-specific real-time tax and compliance solution integrated directly within Shopify checkout, providing wineries and retailers with the same platform trusted by Fortune 20 retailers, leading brands, and ecommerce marketplaces. DRINKS’ app empowers wineries and retailers to dramatically expand their Direct to Consumer (DTC) footprint and take full advantage of the powerful Shopify ecosystem to create, customize, scale, and monetize.
DRINKS makes alcohol tax and compliance simple on Shopify. By installing the DRINKS app, wineries and retailers gain proven tools to help manage complex DTC rules, eliminating the burden of keeping up with constantly changing taxes and regulations. Wineries and retailers can get up and running quickly with hundreds of pre-configured compliance rules – all fully adjustable and automatically updated as tax rates and rules change.
The DRINKS app enables accurate tax and compliance that just works:
- Real-time tax and compliance seamlessly integrated into Shopify checkout
- Hundreds of pre-configured compliance rules that can be managed natively in Shopify to reflect each winery and retailer’s unique situation, automatically updated as tax rates and rules change
- Dynamic store customizations that prompt shoppers for their age and date of birth, restrict non-compliant wines from being added to the shopping cart in real-time or held for manual review, display state-specific messaging, and apply volume limits per order and per customer
- Detailed report generation for state tax filings, including aggregate volume by state and state summary reports including sales, credits, and returns
Shopify Market Lead Wine & Spirits Pete Jones took to the company blog to announce the new partnership, saying he understands the challenges merchants face as a wine producer himself.
Pete Jones
Selling wine in the U.S. has some complicating factors. Not only are there still existing century-year-old laws from the Prohibition era in the U.S. dictating wet and dry counties and where one can sell, there are some complicated compliance and tax laws. Wine merchants must adhere to them, and they are often tricky to navigate. These laws have made it—and continue to make—selling online difficult for wine brands. But technological advances in commerce allow wine brands to see a future beyond such a limited, complex scope of counties...
...Community is at the heart of Shopify. Businesses begin because they fulfill a need in a community or add to its richness. The wine community in the U.S.—and around the world—is as vast as ever. Shopify for Wine will help wine producers and retailers rapidly modernize; unlocking growth while simplifying industry complexities like sales tax and compliance when selling online, furthering their ability to be innovative and experimental with how they serve and engage both new and existing customers.
